HEALTHY FOOD CHOICES FOR VEGANS

MARY HONDROS: I am going to talk to you a little bit about the Vegan Diet. The Vegan Diet is a plant based diet. So that means that a person that follows this diet eats absolutely no animal meat, no cheeses, milks or any dairy products and usually no fish or eggs either. The Vegan Diet is actually a very healthy diet and if you choose a variety of foods you can meet all your nutritional needs by eating a Vegan Diet. Vegans of course need to be concerned about a few things like their protein intake, their calcium, vitamin D and vitamin B12 intakes and iron as well. But it is perfectly possible to get all these nutrients in your diet if you make the right choices. So four tips on making the right choices for a Vegan Diet include: one, get your calcium from all type of sources like broccoli, almonds, figs, parsley. All those are great sources of calcium and they are non-animal products. Two, you can get good sources of protein from tofu items and you can also get your protein from beans. And thirdly, get your calcium from fortified soy milk, rice milk or almond milk. And fourthly, remember that you can--you need to get your vitamin B12 from certain foods as well and the best sources for that are fortified cereals or nutritional yeast supplement. And those are good choices for following a Vegan Diet.